Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Ever trying to figure out a way to "monetize" my blog, I've decided to go into the whisky business. I was inspired by a web savvy retailer who recently sent a number of prominent whisky bloggers (myself, needless to say, not included) whisky samples and asked them to come up with their own blended whiskies. The retailer is now actually selling the resulting blends. That's right, for a mere $48 (plus shipping) you can sample 10 blends put together by some of the web's most prominent whisky bloggers.

I do have to say that I worry a bit about my fellow bloggers in this scheme. It appears that the bloggers are making blends to be sold at retail, and giving oodles of free publicity to said retailer on their blogs. As far as I can tell, though, said bloggers are not sharing in the profits (though who knows?). Well, this doesn't sound like a very good deal to me, so I figured I would cut out the middle man. I have loads of whisky in the closet; why not blend it together and sell it on my own.

That's what I did, and the results are in. I am proud to introduce the Scotch Blended Whisky Society. For a mere $75 membership fee, I will allow you to purchase a number of personally selected blends, specially tasted and given descriptive notes by my one-person blogger tasting panel (yes you read correctly, you pay a fee simply for the privilege of being able to then pay again for the actual whisky; brilliant, I know). In addition, you will have access to my beautiful tasting lounge (i.e. sparsely furnished back room) should you visit the Los Angeles area.

Here are the first selections you will have the privilege to buy if you choose to join the Society (I am using a numeric system to designate the blends so as not to divulge the component whiskies, but you may be able to guess what they are):

Blend 38.89032 1/2 (Bad Day at the Fair) PRESIDENT'S CHOICE

The primary malt in this whisky comes from the Dufftown distillery whose master distiller recently had a very bad case of head lice. This is mingled with the Islay peat monster whose brand ambassador went through an ugly divorce last year. All of that is blended with a number of grains, particularly that from the distillery in which the assistant floor malter neuters cats during his breaks. The nose evinces rancid oil, stale caramel apples and deep fried Snickers bars. The palate tastes of the fledgling hopes of carnies that there will be enough whisky to dull the sounds of screaming children, and the finish is the whiff of old beer, Fritos and cigarettes on the morning after the Strawberry Alarm Clock tribute band performed to a scattering audience of stoned out teenagers and the occasional confused patron looking for the pig races.

Blend 423,875 (International Crisis)

This international blend will have you booking tickets for The Hague. It includes Scotch malt and grain whiskies, Irish pure pot still, Bourbon, Canadian, Swedish, Welsh, Japanese, Taiwanese, Swiss, French, Indian and Argentinian whiskies as well as a rare, aluminum finished Panamanian whisky. The nose will make you recoil with the scent of failed international relations and the palate will follow with a dose of realpolitik and shuttle diplomacy, ending with a finish that can only result in mutually assured destruction.

The nose and palate seem normal enough, but the finish just goes on, and on, and on, and on...

Blend -5 (Epistomological Crisis)

This whisky will lead you to question your very existence. The base malt comes from a distillery whose metacognitive narrative fails to take into account the post-colonial and indeed post-Freudian tropes that inform the distillation process, leading to a Lacanian paradox in which the paradigms of heads and tails are reconceptualized and detached from their signifiers. The grain elements add a post-structural palate that has no essential value such that it deconstructs the very nature of taste and yields to a dawning neo-historical recognition that the death of the distiller is indeed the birth of the taster.